‘Mobile,’ Loaded With Family Baggage

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks disappearing?” asked Jack Kerouac in “On the Road.” In Robert J. Litz’s poignant “Mobile Hymn,” at the Santa Monica Playhouse, those specks are an average dysfunctional American family, drifting away from one another against the majestic expanse of the tamed frontiers.

The feeling here is pain and loss; the tragedy of “a family that totally disintegrates” as all of its members run away from something they finally come to long for. Litz infects us with the romance of the open road, but he also demonstrates how this entails the sacrifice of homey comforts.

John (Tobin Bell) has a “yen for travel” that is “his way of coping” with life’s disappointments. Now his eternally jobless son, Moll (Uri Ryder), has run off. His daughter, Julie (Tracy Middendorf), is off at college. Alone with his wife, Marge (Deirdre O’Connell), he hits male menopause and sells the house and car, buying a mobile home. Without telling the kids, Marge and John set out, drifting from national park to national park. The children return to a house that is no longer their home.

Rick Pagano guides his cast of four away from the road hazards of sappy sentimentalism but deftly allows rest stops of humor along the way. Because each actor plays several roles, Litz layers meanings, sometimes with a Freudian twist. Moll finds comfort with Sweetmeat (O’Connell), a woman 12 years his senior. Bell becomes a homeless man whom the Park Ranger (played by Middendorf) momentarily mistakes for her father. Thus, Litz creates a melancholy rhythm of lonely souls forming “ad hoc families” with tentative connections with the past.

The ensemble handles each character transition with seamless grace, ably displaying the desolation of rootless isolation. As the father, Bell is bluster and bad attitude that mellows into a sad recognition of the destruction he has wrought. Yet O’Connell’s Marge blossoms into an adventurous, independent woman. Ryder and Middendorf slowly mature from rebellious youth into young adults with a sad appreciation for family.

“Mobile Hymn” is a journey well worth taking.

* “Mobile Hymn,” Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends July 20. $15. (310) 394-9779. Running time: 2 hours.